School Districts Begin Reporting Pension Debt

The latest financial statements of the state’s fifth largest school district, Elk Grove Unified, list a pension debt of $414.6 million, up from no pension debt in the statement for the previous year. How did the debt go from zero to hundreds of millions in a year? As you might guess, it didn’t. The change is how the pension debt is reported under a new rule of the Governmental Accounting Standards board that took effect last fiscal year. School districts are required to begin reporting their share of a pension debt that previously had been reported only by the two big statewide retirement systems for teachers and non-teaching employees.